“We best empathize with people—be they colleagues or customers—that we have some shared experience with. So if a company is homogenous in form, it will only be able to connect with a homogenous swathe of humans outside the organization—you’ll only be able to communicate with people who have the same hand on the elephant as you do. This leads to a lack of understanding of what value the customer wants. That misunderstanding is the seed of disruption, for the gap between the value you think your customers want and the value your customers actually want is precisely the space where a competitor can replace you.”

About Faisal Hoque & Drake Baer |
Faisal Hoque is the founder of SHADOKA and other companies. Shadoka’s portfolio of companies accelerates sustainable individual and organizational growth. Formerly of GE and other global brands, he regularly contributes to Fast Company and Huffington Post, and has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Forbes, and Leadership Excellence among other publications. Follow him @faisal_hoque or visit faisalhoque.com.

Drake Baer is a contributing writer for Fast Company, where he covers the intersection of psychology and work. Though he now interviews the foremost minds in business for a living, he’s spent years exploring the world. Follow him @drake_baer.